


be present

by portraitofemmy



Series: the one with the dog [14]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Coping, Eliot Waugh Needs A Hug, Flashbacks, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Season/Series 04, Quentin Coldwater Lives, Trauma, self-care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27634831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portraitofemmy/pseuds/portraitofemmy
Summary: Queliot Week Day 4: “This is real.” + comfortEliot, and the process of comforting yourself
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: the one with the dog [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1404727
Comments: 14
Kudos: 123





	be present

**Author's Note:**

> **Content Warning:** The first section of this contains description of a scene from 4x02 of the Monster ripping out someone's guts. It's nothing worse than what's in the show, except that Eliot's horror for the act might make it more real. Proceed with caution. 
> 
> I kind of deviated from the prompt a bit, in this one. It's much more about coping mechanisms and learning to be a source of comfort to yourself than it is a Queliot fic, but that's just where they are at this point in the 'verse. Thank you so much to **propinquitous** for beta reading, and generally taking this Eliot Goes To Therapy journey with me.

_It’s funny, the way the brain can take memories and mash them together in dreams._

_The dream, Eliot isn’t Eliot, but he is moving. He’s moving through a— graveyard? No, it’s a temple, the ruins of a temple, telekinetically pinning the bulk of a man— a god— pinning him to a tree, all beard and sunglasses and aggression as Eliot's hand reaches inside his body and pulls—_

_—but then he looks up and the man has turned into a woman— and as something inside Eliot rebels in horror, the woman’s features seem to melt into a more familiar face. Now it’s not some nameless person Eliot’s hands are eviscerating against a tree, but it’s Logan Kinnear, wearing what he’d been wearing the day Eliot dragged a bus over him. Revulsion crawls up Eliot’s spine, visceral and deep, and he tries to pull away. He tries, he tries, but he’s not the one in charge of his body, and his hand is moving without his say-so, rooting around soft squishy organs for—_

_And then it’s not Logan Kinnear he’s looking at anymore, in a change so unnoticeable that it might as well never have been a child at all, but it’s Mike, with his beast-blue eyes, neck twisted at the broken angle, while Eliot’s hand searches, slippery wet and sticky—_

_But’s not— oh god, it’s not Mike at all, it’s— Fuck, it’s_ Quentin, _it’s Quentin, wearing clothes Eliot’s never seen him in, light shirt light sweater light jacket, blue jeans, covered in—_ oh god _, he’s covered in blood, and— It’s not his blood, except it is, it is, it is his blood because Eliot’s—_ god fuck, no, please, no, please— _Eliot’s hand is ripping the visera out of him._

Eliot jolts awake, bile pushing at the back of his throat as blind panic clutches in his chest. There’s a dizzying moment of disorientation as he blinks through the bright light streaming into his face, trying to figure out— god, _where the fuck am I_. It’s bright, and for a second, just a second, he can _smell_ the temple in Greece, the greenness of grass trampled underfoot and the copper of blood. 

But no, he’s—

He’s in the condo. 

He’s alone in the condo, half sitting up on the couch in the living room where he’d— apparently fallen asleep in the middle of the afternoon. Around him, the quiet seems almost oppressive, the emptiness throwing a sense of unreality into the whole affair. There’s no one else there, Quentin was—

— _covered in blood, pinned to a tree, bleeding out as Eliot ripped him apart—_

Pushing himself to sit up all the way, Eliot forces air into his lungs, once, twice, again. God, he’s— Quentin is _fine._ Quentin is out dropping off some mending work, that’s all. His bike, a quarantine purchase once it became obvious he’d still be able to work as long as he could come pick up things in need of mending, is propped up by the door, and— Right, he’d left it, he was going to walk instead, take the dog with him which is why she’s not here, waking Eliot up. 

The empty space in the shape of Julia aches, suddenly. Eliot misses her, has missed her since she and Penny went through the trouble of a two-week isolation so they could travel to the Library together, but— she’d been miserable, cut off from Kady and Penny and, well. Eliot can’t fault her for that. He never would have made it three months cut off from Q, not anymore. But now, more than ever, the loneliness of her absence presses down on him, the reality of— _When Q’s gone, I’m alone. I’m all alone, here_. Jittery panic bounces around in his ribs, and he can’t stop seeing the blood, fuck, blood everywhere, god, it’s almost shocking that his hands aren’t stained red when he looks down at them because the feeling is so real. 

His first impulse is to reach his shaking hands for the bar cart, to drown the unsettled wave of anxiety with something which will leave him numb, but— no, he’s— There’s new tools, now, aren’t there? _You should email Patrick,_ says Quentin’s voice in his head, in his heart. It’s different from the Quentin who’d kept him company in the happy place, who was brave and loyal and loving and flat. One of Eliot’s many, many ghosts. No, if he was here, Quentin would push Eliot’s hair back off his brow and kiss his temple and say _Baby I’m fine, I’m right here, I’m safe, you’re safe_ and he’d nudge Eliot into doing the things he’s supposed to be doing to take care of himself.

In his absence, Eliot’s going to have to nudge himself into doing it. _Exhausting_. 

Dragging his hands down his face, Eliot makes himself stand. His tablet, a birthday gift he hadn’t seen coming, is sitting plugged in on the dinner room table. They didn’t really _do_ birthday gifts, or at least they hadn’t thus far, but Quentin had said _“Mending work’s been good, and we can’t keep sharing my laptop._ ” Thus Eliot was the owner of a brand new Galaxy Tab, with a keyboard case and everything. 

It’s sitting plugged in on the dinner room table and sliding in to sit in front of it conveniently puts the bar cart out of his line of sight. There’s a defluffed weasel stuffie sitting on the table too, which, gross, but Quentin had probably been planning to fix that, so he just nudges it out of the way and boots up the tablet, middle finger tapping on the table as he looks around the condo. Absent of any other residents and stuck inside for half a year, the detritus of _Quentin and Eliot and Dessy_ had begun to encroach into the common areas to a greater degree than they’d previously let it. The dining room table has been co-opted as a kind of makeshift workshop bench, littered with colored lenses and mending formulas and books, broken objects set in specific places near certain texts. The stack of mended objects which normally sits down by Eliot’s end of the table is noticeably absent, with Q out making the local deliveries 

Unbidden, the Quentin from his dream swims before his eyes again. Covered in blood, splattered up over his sharp jaw, it’s sticking in the floppy Brian-hair which has almost completely grown out in real life. There’s a look of— pained resignation on his face, as his heart is pulled out of his chest, and Eliot can’t— he can’t, he _can’t—_

Except Quentin is _fine_ , he’s out making deliveries, Dessy on a leash trotting at his heels, taking a long walk while the weather is still nice for it. That’s what’s real. This is what’s real. 

Swiping open the email application, Eliot settles down to write an email to his therapist. It’s easier this way, somehow, to vent out his shit in written form as or just after it happens, then to try to parse through it verbally days later. It’s easier to collect his thoughts when he can read over them and edit them, make it all make sense rather than trying to figure out how to explain the flashback as the words come out of his mouth. It also gives them a place to start, on the Saturday afternoons where Eliot sits down for his weekly hour of baring his soul to a man he’s never met in person via Zoom. At the very least it saves him from the _How have you been, Eliot?_ question which he _fucking loathes_ ; like, it’s been shitty, Patrick, how about you?

Fingers shaking badly enough to make using the little keyboard-case difficult, Eliot tries to exorcise the dream, externalize it, get it out into the stark white box of the open email. It’s— _horrible_ , to clearly see the faces of people being gutted, faces Eliot has never seen but also sees _so clearly_ in his mind's eye. Even more horrible when those faces morph into the faces Eliot does know. Logan. Mike. _Quentin_.

Stomach turning, Eliot stops typing, trying to— fight against it, the rising wave of impulse to— What? Run away? Run _where?_ To drink about it, maybe, but— no, not even that, he just wants to— fucking— shut off his brain.

 _“Trauma’s a physical thing, Eliot_ ,” Patrick had explained, with that friendly patience he always managed to project without seeming patronizing. _“It lives in a different part of our brains than our conscious thought. Part of your body knows you’re suddenly living in a high-stress environment again, and it’s kicking up those old brain trauma responses. The trick is to bring yourself back into other parts of your brain— and the best way to do that is to engage your senses. Light scented candles, put on something to listen to if you’re in the quiet. Often doing something physically is helpful, something repetitive and grounding.”_

There’s a rescue exercise that goes along with that too, one Eliot’s guided Quentin through more often than he’s actually remembered to use it himself. But he does now, sitting alone at the dining room table, panic fluttering in his chest as the echoes of all of the people he’s killed or almost killed or failed to stop from being killed clamber up on him. Five things you can see: table, tablet, book, defluffed weasel, the partially mended remnants of an old china pot. Four things you can feel: the cool plastic keys under his fingertips, the slats of the hardwood floor under his socked feet, the rough cloth pad of the chair he’s sitting on, the wool blend softness of his cardigan. Three things you can hear: the hum of the refrigerator, traffic outside, the quiet burble of forced air heating the condo. Two things you can smell: laundry soap from the sweater, and his own aftershave. One thing you’re looking forward to: take-out night tomorrow, getting a bunch of Indian food to share with Q, the highlight of their weird existence. 

And there’s maybe some merit to this whole grounding bullshit, because by the time he gets through the list, he feels steadier. Steady enough to read through the email to make sure it makes as much sense as it’s going to, and then send it off. Probably Patrick won’t respond, but it’s fine, they’ll talk about it Saturday. He does feel— lighter, maybe, not like the jitteriness inside him is totally gone but at least— at least someone else will know. At least someone else will be able to help him figure out what to do with it. He’s just gotta make it to Saturday.

In the meantime, he needs to _do_ something, take that advice and do something repetitive and soothing. His knee creaks when he stands, fucking useless body that doesn’t know how to be a body anymore, but it holds his weight well enough. Probably he’s better off doing something standing, right now, than sitting down where he’ll just get stiffer.

Mind made up, he takes his tablet into the kitchen with him, propping it up on the counter. There’s a new episode of Bake-Off available when he opens up Netflix, but— Quentin will want to watch that, and Eliot wants to watch it with him. But, yeah, Bake-off sounds about right when it comes to _soothing_ and _repetitive_ , better than listening to the unnatural quiet of the condo all empty of the people who used to make it feel crowded. So he cues up an old episode, a Mel and Sue and Mary Berry episode just for something different, and lets it run as he digs around in the fridge for something to cook.

They had, after some mild guilt tripping, been persuaded to rent a car and drive out to go apple picking in New Jersey with Jackie and Molly. It turned out to be one of the most stressful things Eliot personally has done in the last six months, Quentin’s normal crowd anxiety racked up about 30 times by virus paranoia, and Molly kept taking her mask off to talk. Still, the crowds thinned out once they were into the orchard, and— 

Quentin in an orchard just sat right in Eliot’s bones, in the way of sense memory, the way he stretches up on his toes, the little furrow in his brow. The way he always turns to show off whatever he grabbed from high branches. Eliot has memory layered upon memory of Quentin hoisting a baby, a toddler, a kid too big to be picked up really, up to reach the fruit at the tops of the trees. Eliot had wanted to kiss him, right there against an apple tree, but well— the Baby Yoda mask Q’d recently acquired from a rare Target run did make that kind of difficult. Probably they couldn’t give Molly shit for not wearing her mask and then take theirs off to make out. On the whole, the day had been worth it for Quentin’s ongoing project of fixing things with his mother, even if they’d both had to spend some extra time being gentle with themselves after. 

It feels like he’s spending so much fucking time being _gentle_ with himself these days. 

They’d gotten a lot of good apples out of it at least. These Eliot takes out of the fridge, the last of the batch, a couple starting to go a little funny in places. It’s fine, though, he can trim that out. The process of peeling and slicing apples is familiar, methodical, _repetitive and soothing_ , and he sets about it. Letting the fresh sweet smell of the apples take root in his brain, Eliot gives half his attention to the bakers in the tent, and the other half he devotes to practicing knife-skills. The rocking motion of the blade is familiar, and he buries himself in it until he’s got a bowl full of 7 sliced apples. 

He hadn’t really set out with a plan, but he doesn’t feel up to the kind of quick work required to make pie crust, at the moment. Instead, Eliot fishes out oatmeal and brown sugar, cinnamon and butter, some flour and white sugar to mix in with the apples. The ingredients he mixes together roughly with a fork, cutting the butter into pea-sized clumps, dumping the apple mixture into a buttered pan and covering with the topping.

Of course, he’d forgotten to turn the oven on ahead of time, but such is life, sometimes. Flipping it on to heat up, he focuses on watching dishes, trying to be mindful of the sound of running water, the heat of it on his skin, the texture of the sponge under his fingertips. The oven chirps at him when it’s ready, and he floats the dish into it with magic, because he can, because telekinesis is like a sixth sense always floating along the periphery of his mind. Always there, just out of reach, the shape of objects, their kinetic possibility. 

The apple crisp is out and cooling on the oven top by the time the front door clicks open, spilling Quentin and Dessy into the condo. She’s off-leash already, and she gallops over to where Eliot’s in the middle of cleaning surfaces of the kitchen, the clickity-clack of her nails on the floor a familiar sound. He peels off his rubber cleaning gloves to squat down and rub her warm little sides, protesting knee be damned. 

“Hey,” Q calls out in greeting, voice slightly muffled by the mask he’s still wearing as he shrugs off his coat to hang on the hooks by the door. Today’s mask is printed with little doodle-y drawings from some D&D show he’s started watching, dark blue against his fair skin. He’s lovely, and he’s _alive_ , and something knotting tight in Eliot’s chest— loosens. “Why are you cleaning? Oh, wow, it smells good in here. Did you make pie?”

“Apple crisp,” Eliot corrects, straightening up with all the effort of joints that don't want to be joints as Quentin pads into the kitchen, drifting into Eliot’s orbit for a soft hello kiss. It’s almost an afterthought, like he’s planning to drift right out again, but— Eliot catches him, arms winding around Quentin’s waist, his shoulder, pulling him in for a hug so Eliot can bury his nose right where the skin of Quentin’s neck meets his hoodie and breathe deep.

“Oh, hey, what’s wrong, are you okay?” Quentin’s voice is pitched with concern, soft and private, as his arms come up to return the hug automatically.

“Can’t I just want to hug you?”

“I mean— yeah, I’m not going to complain.” Q’s arms tighten around him, strong and sure, and Eliot focuses on— the smell of him, the feeling, the sound of his breath and his heart. There’s a look of earnest concern on his face when Eliot finally pulls back, and it’s just— he’s just— 

“I love you,” Eliot murmurs, because he’s scared, he’s been scared for hours and trying to comfort himself, and he’s getting better at it, but— it’s still easier, to believe what’s real, when Quentin’s there. 

“I know,” Quentin returns, sliding his hands down to hold Eliot’s waist, steady at his ribs. “I love you too. What’s going on, El?”

“I’ll tell you later.” Even as the words leave his mouth, they sound like a deflection, and he doesn’t mean them to be, he really doesn’t. “I promise I will, right now I’m just— trying to be present. Want to eat some apple crisp out on the patio with me? You can tell me how the drop-offs went.”

“Sure,” Quentin agrees, easily, though there’s still a crease of worry in his brows. “It’s kinda cold out— do we have any cider left?”

“I think we’ve got just enough. Want me to heat it up?”

“Yeah, that’d be great. Let me go change, I’ll just be a minute.”

Quentin comes out of the bedroom, dressed comfortably in grey joggers and a green sweater, as Eliot’s pouring the heated cider into two mugs. They settled on the bench seat on the patio, Quentin sitting sideways with his feet tucked under Eliot’s thighs to eat spoonfuls of rich sweet apple crisp, the cool air of November blowing around them. Lady Des stands with her little feet propped up on the bench by Eliot’s side until his hands are free and he can scoop her up into his lap. She settles more easily on him than she might normally, and that more than anything is a dead giveaway to how rattled he is.

Still, Q won’t push, and Eliot _will_ tell him about the dream. And he’ll talk to Patrick about it on Saturday. For now he can just— be present. 

Here, present, in this moment. 

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found as portraitofemmy on most places, but check me out on [twitter](https://twitter.com/portraitofemmy) and [tumblr](https://portraitofemmy.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


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